Are You a Quercetin Queen (or King)?

Did you and all your patients survive Spring? Have you had a chance to restock the shelves with all the big-gun-Quercetin-products for the next allergy onslaught…or maybe for patients presenting with other conditions that respond well to this, like leaky gut, asthma, MCAS, Grave’s disease? Either way…can I ask you a Quiet Quercetin Question…how high do you go?

I ask this because I know myself to be pretty heavy-handed at times, especially in those severely affected by traditional allergies..and the results are so impressive for patients and practitioners alike, it’s easy to perhaps get very enthusiastic with this approach, with doses sneaking higher and higher… if a little is so good then a lot must be great!

“Severe eczema and allergic asthma – [Insert preferred big-gun-Quercetin-product] 2 three times a day – STAT!”

And we use it across all patients, right? I love it in kids, teens and adults, men and women. So I kind of stopped dead in my tracks when a colleague recently said…”I do the same…buckets of Quercetin especially over hayfever season but Rach, what about it’s phyto-oestrogenic effects? Should we be worried?” Ah…yup…that’s right…being a flavanoid…it has them. Now let’s be clear about one thing, unlike some practitioners I am NOT, I repeat, NOT against phytoestrogens nor even (ahem) soy 😉 but the question was great because it got me thinking…at high-end supplement doses we are producing levels in the body 100s if not 1000s of times higher than a fruit and vegetable rich diet ever can….is it time we knew a little bit more about what Quercetin does at this level, or is suspected of doing and not just the benefits. Therefore we can be more informed about who we should not be so generous or so long-term with our big Quercetin prescriptions?

So I started busying myself in the literature and it turns out THERE IS A LOT OF LITERATURE!

[Note to said colleague who asked me question, you owe me some sleep] But at least I got an answer!

If you want a bit of DIY drilling then this Andes et al paper is an excellent overview of quercetin supplementation safety concerns…but it doesn’t cover everything. We need to talk. We need to talk about that dang estrogen aspect but it’s bigger than that – you see Quercetin doesn’t just engage with oestrogen receptors like a ‘normal’ phytoestrogen…it messes with levels of this hormone via several other paths…and where does that lead us…? Listen in to the latest UU30 Querctin – Are We Pushing the Limits? and you’ll know exactly our destination. This is important for the Quercetin Queens (both male and female) among us…and that’s like…everyone…right? 🙂

Quercetin has become an absolute go-to treatment for many practitioners faced with patients affected with allergies and high histamine. It is in this context, that often we find ourselves using large amounts over long periods. Supplemental quercetin exhibits a 5-20 fold higher bioavailability than its dietary counterpart, therefore increasing body levels beyond what a diet could ever achieve. This introduces more potent novel actions: anti-thyroid, pro-oestrogenic, detoxification disrupting…are we pushing the limits of desirable effects and introducing some undesirable ones and who should we be most conservative in?